Not only will it force reductions in carbon pollution from our nation’s coal-fired power plants, it will put a burner under research into green technologies, which in the end is our only hope to reduce the threat of climate change.

Think about it: If we make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels, companies will invest more in alternatives such as solar and wind power. Our government should be supporting more of this research already; at least now, it has a greater motivation to do so.

Under Obama’s proposal, states are given a range of options to achieve new federal pollution limits. What matters most isn’t what comes out of each individual smokestack, but reducing the total amount of carbon emissions.

This is a smart strategy, and the Republican charge that Obama is overreaching is nonsense. The Clean Air Act gives the federal Environmental Protection Agency the power to limit emissions of anything that harms human health. Under its former chief, Lisa Jackson, the EPA found that carbon qualifies as a pollutant. So Obama has an obligation to enforce these limits, despite opposition from Republicans in Congress and some coal state Democrats.

New Jersey should be especially glad about this, given that most of the coal emissions we breathe float our way from the Midwest and South, where the plants don’t have to use anti-pollution equipment to filter out the worst soot. The new federal limits are going to greatly benefit our health, preventing countless asthma attacks and premature deaths.

We should also be thankful because Gov. Chris Christie has failed to lead on this issue. He unilaterally withdrew our state from a regional program to reduce pollution from power plants, and stole $1 billion from our clean energy fund. While he did agree to fight emissions from a handful of Midwest plants, he pulled us out of a much broader lawsuit on behalf of Northeast states that sought controls on all these plants.

Critics argue that limiting carbon emissions will drive up electricity costs. This may be true in the immediate future, for states that rely heavily on coal. But in the long run, the EPA forecasts that Obama’s new rule will increase energy efficiency, leading to an average decrease of about 8 percent on electricity bills nationally by 2030. Even if the Chamber of Commerce’s scare-estimate of $50 billion in extra costs per year is true, Paul Krugman of the New York Times points out that this would represent just a tiny fraction of our nation’s economic output.

That’s well worth the investment to avoid a global catastrophe. And what of the increasing costs of ignoring global warming? The sea walls, the dunes, the crop losses from drought?

None of this is to say, of course, that the United States can solve the global greenhouse gas problem by itself. After all, China emits more carbon pollution than we do. We’ve been on a downward curve with our emissions, while the Chinese are skyrocketing up.

But the key impediment to getting other countries on board with carbon controls has been our own inaction. Why should they sacrifice when much richer countries of the West will not?

Remember, while China is now the top emitter of carbon, most of the historic pollution in the air that’s fueling global warming was put there by the West. We have a responsibility to take the first steps — and Obama clearly hopes to use this initiative to prod the rest of the world to action.